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Terror and the campaign to re-elect Stephen Harper: Walkom

Expect more terror plots to be uncovered before Canada's October federal election.

Don’t be surprised if more well-publicized terrorist plots are uncovered in the months leading up to the scheduled October vote. And don’t be surprised if Stephen Harper and his ministers make political hay from them, writes Thomas Walkom.
(Ryan Remiorz / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

On Tuesday, the RCMP announced they had stopped 10 alleged jihadists from flying out of Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper went to Montreal to re-announce increased funding for the RCMP’s anti-terror unit.

The campaign to re-elect Canada’s Conservative government is in full swing.

This is not to suggest that the Mounties are actively promoting the Conservatives. There is no evidence of that.

But don’t be surprised if more well-publicized terrorist plots are uncovered in the months leading up to the scheduled October vote.

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And don’t be surprised if Harper and his ministers make political hay from them.

In this case, the arrest of the Montreal 10 led the newscasts for understandable reasons.

Even before this incident, at least seven Montreal youths had reportedly left Canada to join Islamic State militants in Syria.

Two other young Montrealers have been charged with trying to leave Canada to join a banned group, as well as other terror offences.

What was odd about the latest arrests, however, is that no charges were laid. Police seized passports from the 10. But so far they haven’t charged them with trying to leave the country to join a terror group — or, indeed, with anything.

They simply let them go.

Which means, presumably, that the Mounties don’t think these particular alleged jihadists are very dangerous.

That didn’t stop Public Safety Minister Stephen Blaney from praising the RCMP for its vigilance and saying that the “international jihadist movement” has declared war on Canada.

Nor did it prevent Harper from holding a press conference near Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport at which he opined that Canada is a great country and chided anyone who would become a “violent jihadist” or join any group advocating terrorism.

For Harper’s Conservatives, playing the terror card is crucial — particularly in Quebec. The latest CROP poll shows the Conservatives attracting only 15 per cent of the vote in that province. But other polls have suggested that Quebecers strongly support Harper’s tough anti-terror stance.

The more that terrorism can be made top-of-mind, the better the Conservatives will do.

Whatever the reason, the result should benefit the Tories politically.

This isn’t the first time that RCMP criminal investigations have had political implications.

In 1999, the Mounties, accompanied by a television crew, raided the home of then British Columbia’s NDP premier Glen Clark. Clark was charged with breach of trust and accepting a benefit. His political career was destroyed. The New Democrats were trounced in the next election.

Three years later, Clark was acquitted of all charges.

A month before the 2006 federal election, the RCMP announced they were undertaking a criminal investigation of then federal finance minister Ralph Goodale over the leak of confidential tax information about so-called income trusts.

That scandal eventually turned out to be less than it seemed. Goodale and his aides were eventually vindicated, although a senior bureaucrat was charged and convicted.

But the income-trust affair did help sink Paul Martin’s Liberal government, allowing Harper to become prime minister.

An independent investigation into the Mounties’ handling of the affair found that the force had broken no rules because there were none to break.

No party is completely spared the fallout from RCMP investigations. The force’s decision to charge former Conservative senator Mike Duffy for allegedly accepting a bribe from former Harper top aide Nigel Wright has done the prime minister no good.

But the puzzling decision not to charge Wright for offering that alleged bribe promises to mitigate any political damage to the Conservatives

On the terror front, I expect we will hear of more would-be jihadists thwarted over the next six months.

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